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We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

Just everyone use GMT (UTC) and get used to it. What is the point of timezones anyway? Oh, you like that it's 12 in the middle of the day and in the middle of the night. So what. Get over it. It's going to happen eventually anyway.

weierstrass (669421) writes "Peter Judge of ZDnet UK looks at methodologies for measuring the popularity of Linux in general and various distros by location, and explains why the apparent search popularity of linux is dropping everywhere, why sex is less popular than Linux in Communist Cuba, and why, although all American states would choose sex over Linux, the preference is least marked in Utah."Link to Original Source

Anonymous Coward writes "Apparently, Petko D. Petkov, the security researcher and "ethical hacker" behind projects like GNUCITIZEN, as well as the discoverer of several vulnerabilities in software like Quicktime and Adobe Acrobat, has been compromised. He was scheduled to give a talk at Black Hat Las Vegas this 6th August. His e-mail communications since 2006 have been released to the public by an anonymous group self-proclaimed the "Great Council of Internet Superheros", who accuse Petkov of selling out with a tongue in cheek humor.They have mailed few mailing-lists and security industry people, advertising links to mirrors and places where the files containing Petkov's 'mailbox' can be found, in what seems to be a warning for future 'judgements'. Their text contains also a slur against jewish people and Petkov's girlfriend.

The Great Council of Internet Superheros, with help of bl4qh4t l1b3r4t10n 4rmycommandos, has condemned Petko D. Petkov to public exposure, continuous siegeand compromise of his electronic and networked assets.

Petko D. Petkov has been accused and declared guilty of several crimes againstGod, Humankind, Honor, the Queen and his Mother (wherever her grave is locatedin Poland):

01. Extreme media and press whoring.02. Flagrant behavior and lack of discretion and respect for the spirit and
tradition of hacking.03. Claiming hacker status.04. Pretending to be ethical while conducting illegal and morally questionable
behavior.05. Cheating on his anorexic, sex-starved girlfriend.06. Excessive mailbox usage and size (Note: we are superheros but we don't like
to archive 2GB mailbox files. Next time make it easier and help us by
cleaning up a bit).07. Animal cruelty (killing bugs and selling them to ZDI and iDEFENSE).08. Waste of public and Internet resources.09. Using the hacker word for self-promotion and advertisement with commercial
intent.10. Attacking and mis-using the meaning of 0-day.11. Exceeding the limit of mailing-list subscibrals and monthly post quotas set
by the Government of the Internet Chamber of Commerce and Etcetera.

The Great Council of Internet Superheros is now actively researching andinvestigating several security industry personalities for other suspectedcrimes. In the weeks and months to come, other individuals might be judged andaccused of these dispicable activities.

We will strike with greate vengeance and furious anger those who attempt toattack, discredit and offend our brothers. Using our amassed amounts ofawesomeness, super powers and truely useful 0day, there will be no singlenetworked machine capable of withstanding our acts of justice. Oh we say.Now get the mailbox files and mirror them, son......@@@@@>..@@@@@>..@@@@@>.
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TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT,
TO SERVE FOR GREAT JUSTICE,
TO SPREAD JOY AND HAPPINESS,
TO BRING RUIN AND DESPAIR TO THE GUILTY,
TO PREPARE HUMANKIND FOR THE SHOWDOWN OF JEWS,
HERE BE INTERNET SUPERHEROS...
* WE ARE WATCHING *

what you have all been waiting patiently for:=============================================

ruphus13 writes "So, hosting and managing a ton of Ajax calls, even when working with mootools, dojo or scriptaculous, can be quite cumbersome, especially as they get updated, along with your code. In addition, several sites now use these libraries, and the end-user has to download the library each time. Google now will provide hosted versions of these libraries, so users can simply reference Google's hosted version. From the article, 'The thing is, what if multiple sites are using Prototype 1.6? Because browsers cache files according to their URL, there is no way for your browser to realize that it is downloading the same file multiple times. And thus, if you visit 30 sites that use Prototype, then your browser will download prototype.js 30 times.
Today, Google announced a partial solution to this problem that seems obvious in retrospect: Google is now offering the "Google Ajax Libraries API," which allows sites to download five well-known Ajax libraries (Dojo, Prototype, Scriptaculous, Mootools, and jQuery) from Google. This will only work if many sites decide to use Google's copies of the JavaScript libraries; if only one site does so, then there will be no real speed improvement.
There is, of course, something of a privacy violation here, in that Google will now be able to keep track of which users are entering various non-Google Web pages.' Will users adopt this, or is it easy enough to simply host an additional file?"

The IQ League maintain a "60 Second IQ Test" online. Interestingly, they correlate the results of this test with a number of statistics available from their server logs. Along with the geographical distinctions like city and country, the referrer and OS/Browser user-agent strings are also mined, to determine the Smartest Browser and OS. Cutting to the chase, the very smartest is Firefox on Unknown (which internal evidence suggests is MacOS-Intel), and the dumbest, as of this writing, is IE on WinNT. Quick! Test out and move the bars on the pretty graph! Can we make Slashdot.org the "Smartest Website in the World?" (It's currently number 2 behind ScienceBlogs.com.)

OrochimaruVoldemort writes "It seems as though LifeLock isn't as secure as Todd Davis makes it out. According to a LifeLock spokesman, his identity has been stolen. For two years, Davis has been daring hackers to steal his ID. Looks like he got what he wanted. CNN reports: 'Now, LifeLock customers in Maryland, New Jersey and West Virginia are suing Davis, claiming his service didn't work as promised and he knew it wouldn't, because the service had failed even him.'"

GonnaBRichYeahYeah! writes "My dad lives down a dirt road 500 meters off the main road. The cable company will not put cable down his lane for any less than the ridiculous sum of $10,000.
And he cannot get phone line DSL since he is so far away from the central terminal, so he relied on painful 22k/sec dial-up for access to the Internet.
He got sick of it and relies on Hughes satellite Internet, at $60/month, but he still has to be connected to a phone line to upload to the Internet. It's not a good solution, but better than dial-up.
His friend lives on the corner of the main drag with his lane and has cable, thus hi-speed Internet.
I suggested that he get a wireless access point, and put it at his friend's house and then get a wireless card for access. The problem is that no wireless routers go that far (max range of -N is 200 feet) and WiMax is too complex for a 70-year old man. Any suggestions from Slashdot crowd would be helpful." Plenty of people make wireless links over longer distances, but often they're not suited for people who want simplicity and reliability. What's the best out there right now?

esocid writes "BT, an ISP located in the UK, tested secret spyware on tens of thousands of its broadband customers without their knowledge, it admitted yesterday. The scandal came to light only after some customers stumbled across tell-tale signs of spying. At first, they were wrongly told a software virus was to blame. BT said it randomly chose 36,000 broadband users for a 'small-scale technical trial' in 2006 and 2007. The monitoring system, developed by U.S. software company Phorm, formerly known as 121Media, known for being deeply involved in spyware, accesses information from a computer. It then scans every website a customer visits, silently checking for keywords and building up a unique picture of their interests. Executives insisted they had not broken the law and said no 'personally identifiable information' had been shared or divulged."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Once again the RIAA has dropped a case with prejudice, this time after concluding
it was the defendant's daughter it should have sued
in the first place. In the case of Lava v. Amurao, mindful that in similar scenarios it has been held liable for the
defendant's attorney fees (Capitol v. Foster and Atlantic v. Andersen), the RIAA went on the offensive. In this case there was actually no attorney fee motion pending, making their motion all the more intriguing. The organization argued that it was the defendant's
fault that the record companies sued the wrong person, because the defendant didn't tell them that his daughter was the file sharer they were looking for."

profBill writes "As a fifty-something professor who teaches introductory computer science, I am very aware that the twenty-somethings in my class are much more at ease with computers than any other generation. However, does that mean they are more adept at using those computers? Apparently not, according to the researchers at University College London. Their research indicates that while more adept at conducting searches, younger users also show 'impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs'. Moreover, these traits 'are now becoming the norm for all age-groups, from younger pupils and undergraduates through to professors'. The panel makes two conclusions: That libraries (and I wonder what a library will become in the future, anyway) will have to adapt, and that the information processing skills of todays young people are lacking. Why are those skills lacking and, if they are, what can be done about it?"

An anonymous reader writes "Dell and Hewlett-Packard are both facing lawsuits over catastrophic equipment failures that lead to fires and injuries last year. 'In one case, a North Dakota auto lube shop owner claims that a Dell monitor he purchased caught fire and burned down his business ... meanwhile, an Arkansas man has sued HP, claiming that an HP Compaq Presario PC he purchased from Wal-Mart burst into flames, causing a blaze that destroyed his house and seriously injured his daughter.'"

When I was young, I encountered a dangerous divinity, and I would not like to give an account to anybody of what at that time ran across my soul -- of good things as well as of bad things. Thus, I learned betimes to keep silent, and also that one has to learn talking, in order to be silent the right way: that a man with backgrounds has to have foregrounds, be it for others, be it for himself: for the foregrounds are necessary, in order to recover from oneself, and to make it possible to others to live with us.